Agile Project Management for Dummies

by Layton, Mark C.; Ostermiller, Steven J.; Kynaston, Dean J.

• ISBN13: 9781119676997
• ISBN10: 1119676991
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781119677055
• Additional ISBN(s): 9781119405696
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2020-09-29
• Publisher: For Dummies
• More Book Details

Summary

This updated edition shows you how to use the agile project management framework for success!

 

Learn how to apply agile concepts to your projects. This fully updated book covers changes to agile approaches and new information related to the methods of managing an agile project.

Agile Project Management For Dummies, 3rd Edition gives product developers and other project leaders the tools they need for a successful project. This book’s principles and techniques will guide you in creating a product roadmap, self-correcting iterations of deployable products, and preparing for a product launch. Agile approaches are critical for achieving fast and flexible product development. It’s also a useful tool for managing a range of business projects.

Written by one of the original agile technique thought-leaders, this book guides you and your teams in discovering why agile techniques work and how to create an effective agile environment. Users will gain the knowledge to improve various areas of project management.

• Define your product’s vision and features
• Learn the steps for putting agile techniques into action
• Manage the project’s scope and procurement
• Plan your team’s sprints and releases
• Simplify reporting related to the project

Agile Project Management For Dummies can help you to better manage the scope of your project as well as its time demands and costs. You’ll also be prepared to skillfully handle team dynamics, quality challenges, and risks.

Author Biography

Mark C. Layton is an entrepreneur and certification instructor with 25 years of experience in organizational design. Steven J Ostermiller is a community builder, agile trainer and coach helping organizations and people become more agile. Dean J. Kynaston is a coach, Certified Scrum Professional, and organizational agile transformation leader.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 1

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 2

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Understanding Agility 5

Chapter 1: Modernizing Project Management 7

Project Management Needed a Makeover 8

The origins of modern project management 8

The problem with the status quo 9

Introducing Agile Project Management 11

How agile projects work 14

Agile Project Management is Becoming Agile Product Management 16

Differences between managing a project versus developing a product 16

Why agile product development works better 18

Chapter 2: Applying the Agile Manifesto and Principles 21

Understanding the Agile Manifesto 21

Outlining the Four Values of the Agile Manifesto 24

Value 1: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools 25

Value 2: Working software over comprehensive documentation 26

Value 3: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation 28

Value 4: Responding to change over following a plan 29

Defining the 12 Agile Principles 30

Agile principles of customer satisfaction 32

Agile principles of quality 34

Agile principles of teamwork 36

Agile principles of product development 38

Adding the Platinum Principles 42

Resisting formality 42

Thinking and acting as a team 43

Visualizing rather than writing 44

Changes as a Result of Agile Values 45

The Agile Litmus Test 47

Chapter 3: Why Being Agile Works Better 49

Evaluating Agile Benefits 49

How Agile Approaches Beat Historical Approaches 54

Greater flexibility and stability 55

Reduced nonproductive tasks 57

Higher quality, delivered faster 60

Improved team performance 61

Tighter control 62

Faster and less costly failure 63

Why People Like Being Agile 64

Executives 64

Product development and customers 65

Management 66

Development teams 67

Chapter 4: Agility is about Being Customer Focused 69

Knowing Your Customers 69

Common methods for identifying your customer 71

Figuring Out the Problem Your Customer Needs to Solve 79

Using the scientific method 79

Failing early is a form of success 81

Defining customer-focused business goals 82

Story mapping 83

Liberating structures — simple rules to unleash a culture of innovation 83

Understanding Root Cause Analysis 84

Pareto rule 85

Five why’s 86

Ishikawa (fishbone) 87

Part 2: Being Agile 89

Chapter 5: Agile Approaches 91

Diving under the Umbrella of Agile Approaches 91

Reviewing the Big Three: Lean, Scrum, and Extreme Programming 95

An overview of lean 95

An overview of scrum 100

An overview of extreme programming 105

Putting It All Together 107

Chapter 6: Agile Environments in Action 109

Creating the Physical Environment 110

Collocating the team 110

Setting up a dedicated area 112

Removing distractions 113

Low-Tech Communicating 114

High-Tech Communicating 116

Choosing Tools 118

The purpose of the tool 119

Tools that encourage the success of forced team dislocation 119

Organizational and compatibility constraints 121

Chapter 7: Agile Behaviors in Action 123

Establishing Agile Roles 123

Product owner 124

Development team member 128

Scrum master 130

Stakeholders 132

Agile mentor 134

Establishing New Values 134

Commitment 135

Focus 136

Openness 137

Respect 138

Courage 138

Changing Team Philosophy 139

Dedicated team 140

Cross-functionality 141

Self-organization 143

Self-management 144

Size-limited teams 146

Ownership 147

Chapter 8: The Permanent Team 149

Enabling Long-Lived Product Development Teams 149

Leveraging long-term knowledge and capability 150

Navigating Tuckman’s phases to performance 151

Focusing on fundamentals 153

Creating a working agreement 154

Enabling Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose 155

Autonomy 155

Mastery 155

Purpose 156

Highly aligned and highly autonomous teams 157

Building Team Knowledge and Capability 157

Part 3: Agile Planning and Execution 159

Chapter 9: Defining the Product Vision and Product Roadmap 161

Agile Planning 162

Progressive elaboration 164

Inspect and adapt 165

Defining the Product Vision 165

Step 1: Developing the product objective 167

Step 2: Creating a draft vision statement 167

Step 3: Validating and revising the vision statement 169

Step 4: Finalizing the vision statement 170

Creating a Product Roadmap 171

Step 1: Identifying product stakeholders 172

Step 2: Establishing product requirements 173

Step 3: Arranging product features 175

Step 4: Estimating efforts and ordering requirements 176

Step 5: Determining high-level time frames 180

Saving your work 180

Completing the Product Backlog 180

Chapter 10: Planning Releases and Sprints 183

Refining Requirements and Estimates 183

What is a user story? 184

Steps to create a user story 186

Breaking down requirements 190

Estimation poker 192

Affinity estimating 195

Release Planning 197

Preparing for Release 200

Preparing the product for deployment 201

Prepare for operational support 201

Preparing the organization 203

Preparing the marketplace 204

Sprint Planning 205

The sprint backlog 206

The sprint planning meeting 207

Chapter 11: Working throughout the Day 215

Planning Your Day: The Daily Scrum 215

Tracking Progress 219

The sprint backlog 219

The task board 222

Agile Roles in the Sprint 224

Keys for daily product owner success 225

Keys for daily development team member success 226

Keys for daily scrum master success 227

Keys for daily stakeholder success 228

Keys for daily agile mentor success 228

Creating Shippable Functionality 229

Elaborating 230

Developing 230

Verifying 231

Identifying roadblocks 234

Information Radiators 235

The End of the Day 236

Chapter 12: Showcasing Work, Inspecting, and Adapting 239

The Sprint Review 239

Preparing to demonstrate 240

The sprint review meeting 241

Collecting feedback in the sprint review meeting 244

The Sprint Retrospective 245

Planning for retrospectives 247

The retrospective meeting 248

Inspecting and adapting 250

Part 4: Agility Management 251

Chapter 13: Managing a Portfolio: Pursuing Value over Requirements 253

Understanding the Differences in Agile Portfolio Management 254

Should we invest? 255

Factors for forecasting product investment returns 256

Managing Agile Product Portfolios 261

Should we continue investing? 266

Inspecting and adapting to the next opportunity 267

Chapter 14: Managing Scope and Procurement 269

What’s Different about Agile Scope Management? 270

Managing Agile Scope 272

Understanding scope throughout product development 273

Introducing scope changes 275

Managing scope changes 275

Using agile artifacts for scope management 277

What’s Different about Agile Procurement? 278

Managing Agile Procurement 280

Determining need and selecting a vendor 280

Understanding cost approaches and contracts for services 282

Working with a vendor 285

Closing a contract 286

Chapter 15: Managing Time and Cost 287

What’s Different about Agile Time Management? 287

Managing Agile Schedules 289

Introducing velocity 289

Monitoring and adjusting velocity 291

Managing scope changes from a time perspective 297

Managing time by using multiple teams 298

Using agile artifacts for time management 298

What’s Different about Agile Cost Management? 299

Managing Agile Budgets 300

Creating an initial budget 301

Creating a self-funding product 302

Using velocity to determine long-range costs 303

Using agile artifacts for cost management 306

Chapter 16: Managing Team Dynamics and Communication 307

What’s Different about Agile Team Dynamics? 307

Managing Team Dynamics 309

Becoming self-managing and self-organizing 310

Supporting the team: The servant-leader 314

Working with a dedicated team 316

Working with a cross-functional team 317

Reinforcing openness 319

Limiting development team size 320

Managing product development with dislocated teams 321

What’s Different about Agile Communication? 324

Managing Agile Communication 325

Understanding agile communication methods 325

Status and progress reporting 328

Chapter 17: Managing Quality and Risk 331

What’s Different about Agile Quality? 331

Managing Agile Quality 334

Quality and the sprint 335

Proactive quality 335

Quality through regular inspecting and adapting 341

Automated testing 342

What’s Different about Agile Risk Management? 345

Managing Agile Risk 348

Reducing risk inherently 348

Identifying, prioritizing, and responding to risks early 353

Part 5: Ensuring Success 355

Chapter 18: Building a Foundation 357

Organizational and Individual Commitment 357

Organizational commitment 358

Individual commitment 359

Getting commitment 360

Can you make the transition? 361

Timing the transition 362

Choosing the Right Pilot Team Members 363

The agile champion 363

The agile transition team 364

The product owner 365

The development team 366

The scrum master 366

The stakeholders 367

The agile mentor 367

Creating an Environment That Enables Agility 368

Support Agility Initially and Over Time 371

Chapter 19: De-Scaling across Teams 373

Multi-Team Agile Development 374

Making Work Digestible through Vertical Slicing 376

Scrum of scrums 376

Multi-Team Coordination with LeSS 380

LeSS, the smaller framework 380

LeSS Huge framework 381

Sprint review bazaar 382

Observers at the daily scrum 383

Component communities and mentors 383

Multi-team meetings 383

Travelers 384

Aligning through Roles with Scrum@Scale 384

The scrum master cycle 385

The product owner cycle 387

Synchronizing in one hour a day 388

Joint Program Planning with SAFe 388

Joint program increment planning 391

Clarity for managers 392

Disciplined Agile Toolkit 392

Chapter 20: Being a Change Agent 395

Becoming Agile Requires Change 395

Why Change Doesn’t Happen on Its Own 396

Strategic Approaches to Implementing and Managing Change 397

Lewin 398

ADKAR’s five steps to change 399

Kotter’s eight steps for leading change 400

Platinum Edge’s Change Roadmap 401

Step 1: Conduct an agile audit to define an implementation strategy with success metrics 403

Step 2: Build awareness and excitement 404

Step 3: Form a transformation team and identify a pilot 405

Step 4: Build an environment for success 407

Step 5: Train sufficiently and recruit as needed 408

Step 6: Kick off the pilot with active coaching 408

Step 7: Execute the Roadmap to Value 410

Step 8: Gather feedback and improve 410

Step 9: Mature and solidify improvements 411

Step 10: Progressively expand within the organization 412

Leading by Example 412

The role of a servant-leader in an agile organization 413

Keys for successful servant leadership 413

Avoiding Transformation Pitfalls 414

Avoiding agile leadership pitfalls 417

Signs Your Changes Are Slipping 418

Part 6: The Part of Tens 421

Chapter 21: Ten Key Benefits of Agile Product Development 423

Higher Customer Satisfaction 423

Better Product Quality 424

Reduced Risk 425

Increased Collaboration and Ownership 426

More Relevant Metrics 426

Improved Performance Visibility 427

Increased Investment Control 428

Improved Predictability 429

Optimized Team Structures 429

Higher Team Morale 430

Chapter 22: Ten Key Factors for Agile Product Development Success 431

Dedicated Team Members 431

Collocation 432

Done Means Shippable 433

Address What Scrum Exposes 433

Clear Product Vision and Roadmap 433

Product Owner Empowerment 434

Developer Versatility 434

Scrum Master Clout 435

Leadership Support for Learning 435

Transition Support 436

Chapter 23: Ten Signs That You’re Not Agile 437

A Non-Shippable Sprint Product Increment 437

Long Release Cycles 438

Disengaged Stakeholders 439

Lack of Customer Contact 440

Lack of Skill Versatility 441

Automatable Processes Remain Manual 442

Prioritizing Tools over the Work 442

High Manager-to-Creator Ratio 444

Working around What Scrum Exposes 445

Practicing Faux Agile 446

Chapter 24: Ten Valuable Resources for Agile Professionals 449

Agile Project Management For Dummies Online Cheat Sheet 449

Scrum For Dummies 450

The Scrum Alliance 450

The Agile Alliance 450

International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) 451

Mind the Product and ProductTank 451

Lean Enterprise Institute 451

Extreme Programming 452

The Project Management Institute Agile Community 452

Platinum Edge 452

Index 455